Despite the overwhelmingly negative reception from critics, the film was a commercial success and has become one of Chuck Norris's most popular films. It was also Chuck Norris's first film with The Cannon Group.

Contents

Colonel James Braddock is a US military officer who spent seven years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, which he escaped 10 years ago. After the war, Braddock accompanies a government investigation team that travels to Ho Chi Minh City to investigate reports of US soldiers still held prisoner. Braddock obtains the evidence then travels to Thailand, where he meets Tuck, an old Army friend turned black market kingpin. Together, they launch a mission deep into the jungle to free the US POW's from General Trau.

Missing in Action received overwhelmingly negative reviews.[3][4] Scott Weinberg of eFilmCritic.com gave the film 2 stars out of 5, writing that "Norris does Stallone... badly" in his review.[5] In a 2003 BBC article entitled "Rambo: Pretenders to the Throne", Almar Haflidason wrote "the runaway success of the Rambo trilogy inspired dozens of rip-offs", citing that the Missing in Action series was the most famous of the Rambo clones.[6]

Derek Adams of Time Out wrote that the film was "so bad that it defies belief. It's xenophobic, amateurish and extraordinarily dull". He also labeled it as "all-gooks-are-baddies propaganda".[7] On AMC's movie guide, Jeremy Beday of Rovi described the film as a "crass, dopey Rambo-esque film that ultimately fails to connect with anything interesting in the realm of fact or fiction" and that its "chop-socky, shoot-em-up, explosion-a-minute action quickly wears thin".[8] Steve Crum of Video-Reviewmaster.com wrote that MIA was "Chuck Norris' best film, and that isn't saying much".[5] The film currently holds a 21% "Rotten" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.[5]

The film was popular at the box office, one of the most successful ever made by Cannon. It earned over $10 million in rentals in the US[9] and resulted in a profit to Cannon of $6.5 million on the basis of its US release alone.[1]

Missing in Action 2 was filmed back to back with Missing in Action, and was actually set to be released first before the producers changed their minds.[citation needed]

It is the first of a series of Rambo-inspired POW rescue fantasies themed around the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue that were produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and released under their Cannon Films banner, with whom he had a long relationship. Norris later dedicated these films to his younger brother Wieland. Wieland, a private in the 101st Airborne Division, had been killed in June 1970 in Vietnam while on patrol in the defense of Firebase Ripcord.[14] The film, however, was criticized heavily as being a preemptive cash-in on the Rambo film series.[15][16] The film however was a huge success and Norris became Cannon's most prominent star of the 1980s.

^Chuck Norris: The Public Has Made Him a Star: FILM VIEW "'Code of Silence' is a first-rate action picture about a two-fisted, two-footed Chicago cop caught in the middle of a gang war." (Vincent Canby) FILM VIEW
Canby, Vincent. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 12 May 1985: H15.